ROMS is delighted to publish its second issue. As you can see we have five abstracts of papers authored by leading researchers. The papers address important issues including the implications of the information economy for marketing. The authors have told us that they found the review process timely, and reviewer comments beneficial. And that is not all.

USER BASE of ROMS has now reached more than 800. For the short time that the journal has been available we think that this is a wonderful accomplishment. The user base spans 68 countries. And, fully 17% of the users are practitioners. Taken together, this means that authors can benefit form timely dissemination of their work to an audience that is large, global and not just of academic scholars. It is our expectation that the work that ROMS helps disseminate will eventually find its way to prestigious print journals after suitable augmentation and revision. But in the meantime, authors would have successfully reached their audience. And marketing researchers everywhere would have benefited from timely access to these exciting ideas.

THE GOAL is to publish about 10 abstracts in each issue. It is my hope that submissions to ROMS will increase over the next few months so that we can reach this goal. Potential authors should have a better idea of the kind of manuscripts we seek based on those we have published. I extend to all an invitation to submit your latest work that is under review at print journals, to ROMS.

DEBATE CORNER is an innovation recently introduced by ROMS. The idea of the debate corner is to take advantage of the connectivity that the internet offers to promote exchange of ideas on issues that marketing researchers, both academics and practitioners, deem important and in need of wide discussion. If you have not done so, I encourage you to visit the debate corner, and depending on your interests, participate in it. As of now it is hard to conclude that users are waiting in line to participate in the debate. I hope that as more people become familiar with the process of the debate corner we will see more activity. We expect to have a second debate topic in January 2002.

Needless to say, but nevertheless said, we invite your suggestions and comments on the journal in general, as well as the papers and the Debate Corner.